To tackle widespread scientific misconduct, the Chinese government has expanded its controversial social credit system to include infractions made by research scientists. The plan could scare some scientists straight—but the potential for abuse is very real.
The precise location of NASA’s InSight lander within Elysium Planitia is now known, thanks to images captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Earlier today, Virgin Galactic sent its SpaceShipTwo commercial aircraft into space, a historic first for the private company. But at a maximum altitude of 51.4 miles (82.68 kilometers), the spaceplane fell 10.6 miles (17.32 kilometers) short of the Karman line—the internationally recognized boundary separating the…
Since its inception in the 1950s, radiocarbon dating has proven indispensable to archaeologists and climate scientists, who rely on the technique to accurately date organic compounds. But a good thing just got better, owing to the discovery of two stalagmites in a Chinese cave containing a seamless chronological…
The 1,500-year-old Pumapunku temple in western Bolivia is considered a crowning achievement of Andean architecture, yet no one knows what the original structure actually looked like. Until now.
Buried beneath 4,000 feet of Antarctic ice lies Lake Mercer, a subglacial body of water that formed thousands of years ago and has been long separated from the rest of the world. A project to explore this lake—and its mysterious contents—is finally set to begin later this month.
In the very first selfie taken by InSight, the NASA probe looks ready and rarin’ to go.
He was somewhere between the age of 17 and 25 when he died, apparently of natural causes. But for reasons that are unclear, this warrior’s body was speared and clubbed prior to burial, in what is now a fascinating Iron Age mystery. A distinct possibility is that it was done to prevent him from rising from the dead,…
Russian cosmonauts are preparing to inspect a mysterious hole on the exterior of a damaged Soyuz capsule, a complex spacewalk that could take upwards of six hours to complete. The mission is scheduled to start at 11:00 am ET, and you can watch it live right here.
A 68-year-old Seattle woman who died after contracting a rare brain-eating amoeba used regular tap water to rinse her sinuses, according to new research.
It’s been 11 days since InSight made its picture-perfect landing on Mars. Vivid new photos taken from the landing site are finally giving mission controllers a sense of the landscape around the stationary probe—and the early signs are very positive.
The atmosphere of a gas giant exoplanet located 163 light-years from Earth is being blasted into space by its host star, forming a ghostly tail. Excessive ultraviolet radiation is responsible for the celestial phenomenon, according to a new study, a discovery that could provide new insights into planetary formation.
Long before the two deadliest pandemics in history—the Plague of Justinian and the Black Plague—an ancient strain of the bacterium responsible for these scourges, Yersinia pestis, may have already wreaked havoc among Neolithic European communities over 5,000 years ago, according to a controversial new study.
Archaeologists in London, England have uncovered a dramatic 500-year-old male skeleton lying face-down in the mud of the River Thames. Extraordinarily, the skeleton is still wearing his thigh-high leather boots.
Ichthyosaurs and dolphins are the archetypal examples of convergent evolution in action, in which two completely unrelated species acquire near identical characteristics. The discovery of a new ichthyosaur fossil suggests this Jurassic-era creature was even more dolphin-like than we appreciated, featuring warm-blood,…
Artificial intelligence in its current form is mostly harmless, but that’s not going to last. Machines are getting smarter and more capable by the minute, leading to concerns that AI will eventually match, and then exceed, human levels of intelligence—a prospect known as artificial superintelligence (ASI).
During the impending robopocalypse, humanity will have to ward off freakishly agile androids, robotic dogs, whatever the hell this is, and, as new research from MIT suggests, quasi-autonomous, mobile robot-plant hybrids.
The current whereabouts of He Jiankui—the scientist who claims to have engineered the world’s first genetically modified human babies—is unknown. Rumors are now circulating that he’s been detained by the Chinese government.
Today’s successful launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California has resulted in four new records for SpaceX—a sure sign that the Elon Musk-led company, and the commercial space industry in general, is rapidly maturing.
An unusually smooth and reflective Martian rock has caught the attention of NASA scientists, prompting an investigation by the Curiosity rover.
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